Newcastle United boss Kevin Keegan believes his three-year exile hasn't hurt him upon his return to St James' Park this season.

"I told the owner [Mike Ashley] when I took the job here that I knew this club and I knew what was required," Keegan told The Times. "When I went to Fulham, I couldn't say that; I just knew it had a ground on the side of the Thames and that Johnny Haynes and Jimmy Hill had played there. I didn't know anything about it. But this club I did. I wasn't coming in cold. I'd played for it, I'd managed it before.

"I'd played here when it was quite successful and the only thing we could do was get out of the division below and we did that. And I'd managed it when we went from the division below and could and probably should have won the Premier League. Those things I knew, and that was important.

"What I didn't know was what players I had today. I knew the names, but not what character they'd got and I knew all the top teams, but it was the other ones we were going to be playing - I didn't know all the players, I'll be honest with you, and I was honest enough to say that at the time. I hadn't watched a live game for three years. To me, that's not necessarily a big deal," he said.

"I don't think Arsene Wenger goes to watch the opposition and I'd watched a lot of games on television. I know all the players in Europe. I know now, having been here for more than three months, that half the targets I'd like are the same people I'd have liked when I was out of the game. I was looking at them and thinking, - Wow, if I was a manager now, that's the sort of player you'd like at your club.'

"Being away from it was not as big a thing as the press made it out to be and then, when things weren't going well, exaggerated it. In some ways it got me focused on what we had here, what we had to work with."